


The blows of time and life

by fineandwittie



Series: And I'll call you by mine [6]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Angst, I named oliver's fiance after Armie's - Freeform, M/M, Oliver hurts real pretty, Oliver's POV, because always, phone call from oliver's perspective kind of - Freeform, this is a mix of book and movie - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-09 18:13:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13486995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fineandwittie/pseuds/fineandwittie
Summary: This is a sort of reimagining of the Phone Call at the end of the film from Oliver's perspective.





	The blows of time and life

The phone call I made the winter after I left Italy was the hardest call I’ve ever made. Listening to the break in Elio’s voice, the pain I had caused him, when he told me that I was being silly, that of course he didn’t mind, that news of my impending marriage was wonderful.

I thought I would be sick. 

Elizabeth took one look at my face when I came back into the living room of my apartment where she was sitting on the couch and shook her head. “Who is she?”

I think I frowned at her, but I could hardly focus. My mind, my soul, was thousands of miles away in Italy, still baking under the hot summer sun, still straining toward Elio as he sat playing his guitar across the pool from _heaven_.

“What? Who?”

Elizabeth stood and crossed her arms, a kind expression on her face. “The woman that you fell in love with in Italy.”

That brought me crashing back to the present. I barked out a laugh, unable to stop myself. It sounded bitter. It was bitter. I could still taste the ocean on the back of my tongue. I could still taste Elio. I wanted to collapse at her feet, weeping, and confess everything. I wanted to get on a plane, leave her behind, and fly back to Italy. Pro would let me stay, of that I had no doubt. That might be the only thing I didn’t doubt. 

It was my turn to shake my head. “There was no woman, Liz.”

She stared at me for a moment, expression unchanged. “A man, then. Who was he?”

It was as though she’d reached into my chest and ripped my heart out to see Elio’s name scored into it. I had to sit down. My legs would no longer hold me. 

“Well, that’s not a denial. What was his name?”

I wanted to say Oliver. I wanted to say that names are useless things and that we had not been separated by them, rather shared both our names between us. That I was Elio and he Oliver, or we were both Elio-Oliver. But that was not for her to hear. That was for no one, but Elio.

“Elio.” My voice was papery, lacking conviction, and so wounded that its sound nearly made me cry. I had not known that this love was still so fresh. I had childishly believe that boxing it up and shoving it to the back of my mind had made a scar form over it, had closed the hole inside me. How could I have been so foolish?

Elizabeth frowned. “Elio? Isn’t that the son of the professor you were staying with?”

I looked up at her. 

She inhaled sharply at whatever she found in my face. I felt as though I’d been cracked open. “How old was he, Oliver?” I told her and watched her jaw tighten. “Well, that’s not as bad as I was imagining. How could you have…How could you have fallen in love with…”

I laughed, thin and reedy. “You don’t know him, Elizabeth. Elio was…is…He’s…I can’t even describe him to you. He’s magnificent.” 

She laughed, though it didn’t sound amused. “Can I see of a picture of this magnificent Italian boy who can turn my fiancé’s eye so easily?”

“I didn’t mean his looks, Liz, although yes. He is quite beautiful.” She raised an eyebrow at me as if to say _Well? Let me see._

I hesitated, strangely unwilling to share even his face with her, unwilling to let her see that I carried his photograph in my wallet behind hers so no one would see it.

The picture was one that Pro had mailed to me soon after I arrived back in New York. Vimini must have taken it as I never saw anyone else with a camera for the whole of my stay there. 

I can’t tell what day it was. Elio and I both wore the same clothing so often that one day bled into another, each one spent in swim trunks and skin. In the photograph, you can just see that I’m wearing my green suit. It must have been taken from Vimini’s rock. 

The angle cuts Elio’s trunks out of the picture. He could be nude for all the camera can tell, cock and testicles and ass exposed to the air and the eyes of Marzia and Chiara who were no doubt lying in the sun and Matteo who you can just see further out in the water. 

I wanted to imagine him that way. Naked, exposed, vulnerable to the elements and my touch, but every time I tried the old jealousy comes swelling back. That dark possessive want that I felt the morning he returned at dawn from Marzia’s arms. 

He looks older or maybe I look younger. My hand spans much of his waist, my fingers digging into his flesh. I might have been trying to pull him into the water. I might have been trying to stop his from leaving. I don’t remember or can’t bring myself to. 

I’m staring down at him and his head is tilted back to meet my gaze. We look so deeply in love that even a quick glance at the picture is enough to open the wound inside my heart to bleed anew. It seems so obvious, so impossibly plain that I don’t understand how no one else knew. Well, no one, but Elio’s parents. 

Elizabeth takes it from my hands and looks down at it. Her lips part on a silent gasp. “Oliver…”

“I’m sorry. Liz, I’m—“ Although it’s a lie. 

“No.” She shook her head and looked up at me. There were tears in her eyes. “Never be sorry for this. Not to me. Never be sorry for loving someone this much.”

And I did love him. I do love him. God, so much that I could barely contain it all inside me and I’d find myself at odd moments weeping, as though my eyes had become a release value for my heart. I missed him so fiercely that it was like missing a limb, like he’d cut out a piece of me and kept it with him when I left. 

I didn’t know how I could stand the rest of my life without him and yet there was no way to have him here with me or to be there with him. There was no way for us to be together.

I was crying again, slipping out of my chair and onto the floor. I wrapped my arms around my head, trying to protect myself from the blows that time and life were raining down on me, but that I knew I could not ward off. Blows that, given long enough, would kill me, I was sure.

_You’ll kill me if you stop._

I’d said it once to Elio, or he to me, or both of us. I couldn’t be sure. Couldn’t be sure of anything that was said between us, because the difference between what I’d dreamed and what had happened was so blurred. The barriers of our skin had melted away and we’d merged into one soul, something that Aristophanes might be proud of, one soul shared between two bodies. The distance between us now had stretched our soul thin and it hurt.

_You’ll kill me if you stop._

But no that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t _You’ll kill me if you stop._ , but instead or now _You’ll kill me if you don’t._ and also, _Never stop, even if it kills me._

Never stop loving me, Elio. Never let me go. Never send me back that small piece of myself that you took from me. I don’t want it. All I want is you. All I’ve ever wanted in the whole of my life is your body under or above mine, your taste in my mouth, your smile, your wit, your love. 

Elizabeth had crouched down next to me and pulled me into her arms.


End file.
